Molecular size is one of those things that has multiple answers. A common way is to determine a "kinetic diameter" by measuring permiation through a membrane. By that measure CO2 (330 pm), is smaller than O2 (346 pm) and N2 (364 pm). A nice discussion of this dealing with separation of CO2 from air can be found in this paper

While the separation between the two oxygen nuclei is greater in CO2 than in O2, remember that O2 has a triplet ground state, with two unpaired electrons, while CO2 is a singlet. On the other hand, what is the point being made?

Ah, yes, triplet ground state. I _know_ that, but I often forget to take it into account. Should have thought a little more. Thanks!

(this was in reference to a discussion about the validity of ice core records and the ability of CO2 to fractionate. I won't sully this website with a link to the argument. But the CO2/O2 size bit surprised me)

In some sense i agree with Carmen.Assuming she does not understand much about climate, she'd better stay away from those sites, they're too complicated for a starter and would make Carmen run away fast. Like a bunny maybe.Riccardo

The Honest Broker is a piece of immature twaddle based on a misunderstanding of what good brokers really do, which is to match buyers and sellers. Pielke's "honest broker" slams the Yellow Pages down on the counter and leaves.

The Lavosier Group http://www.lavoisier.com.au/Junkscience.com http://www.junkscience.com/links/gwlinks.htm Still Waiting for Greenhouse (A Lukewarm View from Tasmania) http://www.john-daly.com/Global Warming http://www.ozemail.com.au/~hughesw7/Cato Institute http://www.cato.orgCompetitive Enterprise Institute http://www.cei.org/ Greenhouse Warming: Fact, Hypothesis, or Myth?http://users.erols.com/dhoyt1/index.htmlGreening Earth Society http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/CO2 science. org http://www.co2science.org/The National Centre for Public Policy Research http://www.nationalcenter.org/THe Australian Environment Foundation http://www.aefweb.info/ the environment is ok as long as it does not get in the way of business groupInstitute of Public Affairs http://www.ipa.org.au/http://icecap.us/ http://www.co2web.info/ GW is naturalnov55.com Intelligent design, gw is false, big bang is bullclimatescienceinternational.org Bob Carter's site http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_1.htm has he published anything peer reviewed?http://newsbusters.org/ Repuplicans good dems bad, media is biased,Global Warming is a liberal conhttp://www.climatepolice.com/http://www.climateaudit.org/http://www.auscsc.org.au the Australian Climate Science Coalitionhttp://www.climatedebatedaily.com/ Climate Debate Daily Appears neutral but is linked by denier sitesTHe Marshal Institute http://www.marshall.org/subcategory.php?id=9__________________You said you wanted science fiction

SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS:POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?by Joseph D’Aleo & Anthony Watts | January 26, 2010SUMMARY FOR POLICYMAKERS1. Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.2. All terrestrial surface-temperature databases exhibit very serious problems that render them useless for determining accurate long-term temperature trends.3. All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.4. Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.5. There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.6. Contamination by urbanization, changes in land use, improper siting, and inadequately-calibrated instrument upgrades further overstates warming.7. Numerous peer-reviewed papers in recent years have shown the overstatement of observed longer term warming is 30-50% from heat-island contamination alone.8. Cherry-picking of observing sites combined with interpolation to vacant data grids may make heat-island bias greater than 50% of 20th-century warming.9. In the oceans, data are missing and uncertainties are substantial. Comprehensive coverage has only been available since 2003, and shows no warming.10. Satellite temperature monitoring has provided an alternative to terrestrial stations in compiling the global lower-troposphere temperature record. Their findings are increasingly diverging from the station-based constructions in a manner consistent with evidence of a warm bias in the surface temperature record.11. NOAA and NASA, along with CRU, were the driving forces behind the systematic hyping of 20th-century “global warming”.12. Changes have been made to alter the historical record to mask cyclical changes that could be readily explained by natural factors like multidecadal ocean and solar changes.13. Global terrestrial data bases are seriously flawed and can no longer be trusted to assess climate trends or VALIDATE model forecasts.14. An inclusive external assessment is essential of the surface temperature record of CRU, GISS and NCDC “chaired and paneled by mutually agreed to climate scientists who do not have a vested interest in the outcome of the evaluations.”15. Reliance on the global data by both the UNIPCC and the US GCRP/CCSP also requires a full investigation and audit.

"Michael Mann in a Climategate email to Phil Jones of CRU and Gavin Schmidt of NASA wrote: “As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, it’s about plausibly deniable accusations.”

Elsewhere re Watts surfacestation and your half cocked attempt at debunking: "They cite 60 years of data in the graph they present, ignoring the warmer 1930's. They also use an early and incomplete surfacestations.org dataset, that was never intended for analysis, in their rush to rebut the issues raised. However, our survey most certainly cannot account for changes to the station locations or station siting quality any further back than about 30 years...."

Hi, I noticed that several past posts on this blog use the "glaciers (mostly) melting by 2035" argument to advocate urgent policy changes in Asia, and refer to the IPCC AR4 report for that. Time to edit them to add a note of caution (just google "Rabett Run glaciers"...)?

Markey, the Mann quote you mention from the CRU emails is in reference to climate disruption deniers such as Watts, D'Aleo, and McIntyre making vague accusations that can be retracted later with a wink and nod.

And Menne et al don't present 60 years of data, but rather just the last 30 or so (1980, the start of the satellite era). See this image from the paper: http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/menne10-fig2a-d.jpg

Watts will have to do much, much better than that to get traction against a paper that did the actual data analysis he refused to do.

My "fav" is DenialDepothttp://denialdepot.blogspot.com/"We are not afraid to be called climate "deniers". In fact we embrace it as medal of honor bestowed on us by our alarmist foes. Galileo was a Denier. It is not an insult. I call this blog "Denier Depot" for that reason."

What I want to know is why noone is taking stuff like this apart? Do none of the scientists working with surface records or GHCN show any interest in rebutting this stuff? They are the ones with all the knowledge of the details of methods, data, etc and they are the ones being slandered.

I know the New Zealand Met office rebutted something a while ago, but they didn't follow it through to the end and in my opinion they weren't aggressive enough in pointing out the stupidity of the deniers.

The "station dropout" claim and "moving thermometers to hotter places" is so ridiculous that I have serious doubts of the competency of the deniers who drew up this report. But then most of their claims are on subjects I have to read up on.

I am going to give the SPPI document some attention. I already took apart the first page of the "preliminary" report, in a lazy way. As part of this I am also downloading the GHCN data and reading through the documentation.

So the question from me is why are all these accusations against the surface record going pretty much unchallenged?

It seems we are overwhelmed by idiots. There's probably only about a few dozen of us in total online, yet a few hundred hardcore deniers.

1. There is no greenhouse gas signal in the economic or human toll record of disasters.

*If you tried to extract the greenhouse gas signal from something like economic effects, you'd have to check at least a) the accounts of businessses in the disaster areas before and after the disaster, b) the IRS (or equivalent) records, and possible subsidies considering the disaster area, before and after the disaster, c) the effects of the disaster on the stock market, especially concerning the businesses located in the disaster area, d) the insurance companies record of the paid damages, in relation to paid damages on non-disaster area, e) the lost income of every person in the disaster area due the destroyed businesses,contacts etc., f) the economic effects of rebuilding in the disaster area to the neighbouring areas, g) the costs of transport of rebuilding materials, h) the damages paid because of the human casualties and, i) have contacts to criminal economic activity to do the same with their numbers (do they keep records?)

and a most of these numbers are not possible to obtain since the law does not require businesses to keep their records safe for more than 30 years (that is in here). Are you asking that the investigator should have the right to check all the records of the insurance companies, the individual shops and businesses in and conserning the disaster area and the IRS (or equivalent)? How likely it is that some of these have actually been destroyed in the said disaster?

If you'd try to relate the greenhouse gas signal (which is there) to human casualties, you'd have to cross-reference the possibly greenhouse gas signal -related deaths, illnesses and injuries with a) the likelihood of similar injuries, illnesses and death not associated with greenhouse gas induced effects, b) the likelihood of similar type of catastrophes without the greenhouse gas signal (which itself is hard), c) the presence of the socio-economical upheavals before, during and after the catastrophe, d) the psychology of the people conserned with the catastrophe, since it is known that various people react differently to a catastrophe, e) the potential presence of contemporary, non-greenhouse gas signal-related causes of injuries, illnesses and deaths, and f) have records of all the people (including the home-born, unchastised and unrecorded (by no-one but their mother) children) in the remotest areas where a disaster has hit, if you think they have value.

and this is not possible for there is f.e. such a thing as medical records of individuals, which are not public info for a long time (or were they destroyed after 50 years after the individual has died?, so here, if I remember correctly). Moreover, to check this you should also be able evaluate the competence of the medicinal facilities in the disaster area before and after the disaster, and most likely you would not be doing that if you were a medical doctor (with the competence to do the evaluation) in a disaster area. Are you asking the medical doctors to break their Hippocratic oath?

Extracting either of this info would be illegal, so yes, there is no signal, since your claim is based on wrong assumption that this could somehow be accurately calculated.

10. Leading scientific assessments have botched major issues (like disasters).

if you refer to the IPCC report, the report that evaluates climate science, and does not conduct research, you're barking at the wrong tree. Instead you should blame the scientists for not doing such research. This, see the answer to #1, is in many cases illegal, and because it is, it cannot be very conclusive. So, they have not botched disasters.

The blob - checkout the comments at various recent threads at Deltoid, which is linked in the side column of the main page here. The bloke wh runs itis called tim lambert. There was a paper out recently by Menne et al which does the examination the denialists have refused to do, and surprise surprise, the US temperature record is robust. The issue here is that science is getting attacked for political reasons.

MarkeyMouse says: In reply to the stupid one. Yes, There is no greenhouse gas signal in the economic or human toll record of disasters.

Normalized Hurricane Damages in the United States: 1925–95

Roger A. Pielke Jr. Christopher W. Landsea

"Only during the early 1990s does damage approach the high level of impact seen back in the 1940s through the 1960s, showing that what has been observed recently is not unprecedented." http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0434(1998)013%3C0621:NHDITU%3E2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1

Ah, the Pielke and Landsea paper that was the first of many from the Jr. posse. Too bad they all rely on flawed methods - pointed out by Judith Curry (note: .pdf file) - that negate whatever conclusions drawn by Jr. and friends in those papers. Alas alack etc.

And it's also nice to see Dr. Curry point out how professional jealousy from Jr. can affect his better judgment, especially during Congressional and Senate hearings. But hey, we all knew that already :-)

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.H.P. Lovecraft

Wow, 52 comments, and only one by Deech. Benson seems to be stuffing the ballot box, but as Tamino would say in his elegant prose, he is either "stupid or ignorant" (I guess that is what happens when you are being lied to).

It looks like you have subscribed your blog to the equivalent of Enzyte. I congratulate you on your enormous popularity since I last checked in. I further applaud your enhanced popularity since I last checked in. Do keep up the good work.

I have now made over 9000 requests for the proof humans cause climate change, with a $25,000 reward.There is no proof, only belief.$25,000 reward for the proof humans cause climte change.Bruce A. Kershawhttp://co2u.info

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett is a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny, a chair election from retirement, at a wanna be research university that has a lot to be proud of but has swallowed the Kool-Aid. The students are naive but great and the administrators vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional. His colleagues are smart, but they have a curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they occasionally heed his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.